She is probably feeling the backlash of having her friends plan things behind her back during the calendar machine caper. Even if they had the best of intentions, her emotional side is probably pretty bruised and it’s bringing up past, painful memories and her own fears. Logic and emotion rarely go hand in hand.

I thought the same thing, and with today’s post started questioning her relationship with Amanda. Amanda is supposed to be her closest friend (much moreso than Shelly, the GGG, Kevin, or any of the others) and from the early strips, more family to her than her real family. Yet, she has kept Amanda in the dark about this entire supernatural affair (Amanda being her only friend, to date, to not encounter any of the GGG. Even Jacqui met Bud).

I’m starting to wonder if Monica is questioning her relationship with Amanda now too, especially considering her other friends recent actions.

To be honest, the art reminded me of a page in the VGCats comic where the one character is dressed as Link in a straightjacket with the words “Hey Listen!” all over the walls. “They’re Still Out There” probably refers to the demons/”ghosts”/etc. that she saw that chased her in front of the bus. She was running out of fear for her life, but her parents thought she was trying to end her life. She of course tried to explain things and it was diagnosed as paranoid delusions. Future ACTUAL suicide attempts didn’t help her case, much. That is also not to mention how BIG Doubt grew as an influence, etc. So, for 4 years, she was locked in a rubber room by her parents whom she most trusted who thought they were doing what was best for her all the while she was still “suffering” her “delusions.” They were still out there (and in her).
What a personal hell that would be.

I think Monica really needs at least one good solid dope slap upside the head right now – maybe two would be better. This is a place she needs to dump and leave behind forever — all her “crazy” has been proved to be reality (albeit a very strange reality), time to get over it girl. She’s really one warped puppy if she thinks she’d rather have her parents think she’s crazy than show them her reality — that *is* dwelling in the crazy place.

It’s not her feelings about her reality that are causing this. It’s about her parent’s reactions to it.
“She’s seeing crazy things, talking to dead grandparents…”
“We have to do this for her own good…”

And she’s also reacting to the fact of her feelings about them not accepting he view of reality. She accepts her reality, she does not accept how they felt about it, and it HURTS.

“…One day I asked my dad why no one else visited her… HE SAID SHE HAD BEEN DEAD FOR 12 YEARS! When I tried to prove him wrong,m she was nowhere around! Anywhere! I spent the next four years ‘visiting’ a doctor, just this side of a RUBBER ROOM!”

I’ve been assuming from all this that her parents died when Monica was fairly young — but I don’t think this has ever actually been said. Isn’t there a picture of her in the strip with Grandpa Sullivan? So I think she had some times with him.

Psychological issues, as per the perspective of the rest of the family, have a tendency to alienate you from others. It’s nice, though, that she probably has a somewhat large family and some of it still interacts with her, regardless. I am, of course, only ASSUMING her full extended family is large. I don’t know if it has been stated the size of it, though. She doesn’t have siblings, either, does she?

aw poor Monica, I’m sure lots of people have felt that way before, maybe not about supernatural calendars! : )
Thanks for keeping up this webcomic, I’ve read it for years and I’ve really connected with Monica’s character.

After thinking about this for a bit, I’d like to see something happen if/when Monica wishes to confront her parents…

Monica Poits into her parents living room in front of them. As they’re reeling from her sudden appearance, she hands her father a letter. Teary eyed, she Poits out. When they recover from the shock of their daughter appearing and disappearing, they look to the letter she left… which reads: “Shakespeare was right. There really is more to the world than dreamt of in our philosophy. I found them.”

I mentioned Peter David’s “Supergirl” in a comment a bit further down.

One of the stories involves her friend Andy (Andrea, a lesbian who is also a centauroid, male superhero) going home to confront her parents, who rejected when she came out.

She finds her father unable to speak, post-stroke, and her mother not there.

Her father hands her a videocassette, and she watches it – it’s a message from her mother, saying how much she’s come to regret the estrangement, and how much she wishes she could find Andy and make it better…

But life is what happens while you’re making other plans … and she finishes the tape by apologising once again, as she pulls off the wig to reveal her chemo-therapy baldness.

“Never go to sleep angry” is a very good rule; as Jimmy Dale Gilmore reminds us:

“even if you’re lyin’ with someone you love
you have to go to sleep alone…”

For the most part, no one ever WANTS to put their kids/siblings/friends into a mental care facility.

In this case, Monica’s parents did not have any frame of reference for what was happening… how could they reasonably be expected to believe her? I think Monica’s a smart enough girl to realize that.

Unless they are folks with a malicious history (and we’ve seen nothing to tell us if this is so) she can TRUST that they did it because they loved her, because they sincerely believed there was nothing else they could do.

If she can’t trust whether they will believe her, she can at least trust that they love her.

… yeah … Ms. Phix represents her mother, the golem girls are fellow inmates, her boss is the Chief of Psychiatry, Tina is the sunny nurses aid that passes out the pills, and the little blue guy is completely imaginary … yeah, that’s gotta be it … all a conspiracy … diabolocal experiments … bigfoots and UFOs … yeah … it all makes sense now … Wait! What? No, I wasn’t talking to anybody. See? there’s nobody here. I’m fine, really. Everything is fine. I promise … but it isn’t time for my meds, why do I have to take them now?

… To the Happy Home, with trees and flowers and chirping birds, and basket-weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they’re coming to take you a way, ha-haaa…
(Apologies to Napoleon XIV)

Well, while that might be interesting, I seriously hope Paul doesn’t use such a trope. I’d like to give him more creative credit than that. Otherwise, he’d have to show he could do it very very well… and I dunno if ANYONE could do that trope “well” ….

Well, it would explain why the majority of the characters are female (psych ward segregated by gender), the GGs violent pasts (sociopathic gang, perhaps?), and Ms. Phix’s height (we all think of our parents as bigger than they are).

Ooo … a great alternate real-world story line. Sort of a new Star Trek alternate universe kind of thing. Talk about not seeing it coming! A couple of years of story arcs later we would find out, even that isn’t reality and Monica is actually still in the room with the calendar machine and the knife has just been plunged into her head and twisted.

It would, however, be a real challange for a writer/illustrator to hang onto his fan base after such coming-out-of-left-field story revelations, but if anyone could do it, it would be Paul.

The stories about “Lin” who was {though PAD couldn’t say it out loud, because of copyrights} Peter David’s version of Supergirl, and woke up in a mental hospital, and then discovered she had a completely different past.

I wish I could draw … creative ideas with no talent to express them. The idea that all of this has been an elaborate hallucination that Monica has been narrating between doses of Thorazine ever since she was committed as a child is gonna bother me all weekend until Monday’s update. And then SoWhyMe’s idea that even the padded cell isn’t reality, and that Monica is actually still in the room with the calendar machine and a knife in her head has only added fuel to the fire. Ah, well … which is worse: creativity without talent, or talent without creativity? And what are either compared to Pablo’s creative talent and “What the heck just happened” plot twists? I can hardly wait ’til Monday (someone’s gotta give that poor girl a hug…).

Wishing won’t make it so. Practice will. Anyone can draw if they practice the basics enough. It doesn’t take any special talent. What takes talent is not only being able to draw, but to develop an art style as wonderful as Paul’s. As I recall he won an award for his style of drawing the characters on Wapsi. And well deserved it was. I see it as a very earthy style. So expressive.

In any event, you can draw whatever you wish if you but try. It only takes 3 things. Practice, practice, practice. A few art classes can be helpful but not essential. Plenty of self help stuff on line.

Oh, and talent without creativity is worse. Creativity is the driving force. Without it, nothing happens. Talent will develop naturally during the creative process.

I can only think of two reasons for using such a cop-out (there may be others, but I can’t think of them):

1. You realize you’ve written yourself into a corner and there’s NO WAY OUT. However, there is always some way to cope, even if it requires a new character, a new ability of a current character, or some such response. Or show what the other people are up to in another part of the field.

2. You are unable to commit to one story line, or wanted to explore alternative choices. Tough. Authors have to set limits for themselves. Get used to it.

Hm, I think she should “wake up” to all this having been a hallucination…only to wake “again” up to find out that that she was dreaming that it was a hallucination. 😉 That gives us the plot twist to shock us all…but then puts us all back into the regular story line we all enjoy so much.

I think she’s just coming down off an adrenaline high. I’ve experienced similar feelings after a stressful week at work (when I had a job).

Topez put it quite well a couple of strips ago. The same applies to War Correspondents — I remember Martin Bell, in an interview, commenting on what it was like to return to Britain after reporting on the war in Bosnia.